Chapter 12

Juan leaned against the side of my truck, grinning as he watched the pup Owen had saved hobble around my front yard, her tail wagging happily.

"Canela?"

Cinnamon? I squinted at her, trying to see it. "You really think she's red enough for that?"

"Eh," he said, waggling his hand back and forth. "More brown. You're right. But how about Pepita then?"

"Isn't that what you call your cousin Josefina?"

Juan shrugged. "Sure, but they're both short and stubby so…"

I laughed. "You're lucky I'm a good enough friend not to tell your cousin you said that."

"What, it's true!"

"And again, I'll be a good enough friend not to tell her you said that. You're welcome."

He rolled his eyes. "It's still a good name. You guys can't keep calling her Stumpy. It isn't right."

I grinned. As far as I was concerned, anything that made my boy smile was right. "Take it up with Owen. He says she might as well own it. Besides, he insists it's just a nickname until we find out her real one, so I'm not sure you'll get very far."

Juan cocked his head to the side, giving me an assessing look. "Oh? And have you had any responses to the missing pet notifications?"

"Not yet."

"Hm."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He threw up his hands. "What? I just said hm!"

"It's not what you said, it's how you said it."

No way was I buying the exaggerated show of innocence. He had an opinion, and he wasn't going to leave until he'd shared it.

He'd come by to return a grill I'd loaned to the Ruizes for his abuela's ninetieth birthday party, and normally, that would mean the two of us sat around with some beers and shot the shit for a while. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting a little antsy to send him on his way so I could go back inside and check on my boy.

Owen had just taken a call from the insurance adjuster when Juan showed up, and while I knew he was more than capable of handling that—although I'd had to bite my tongue more times than I could count to keep from telling him my opinion of the way his parents treated him like an unpaid property manager—I didn't want him to have to do it alone.

I didn't want him to ever have to do anything alone again.

Not if it stressed him out.

Not unless he wanted to.

I had no doubt at all that Juan could tell I was getting a little restless for him to get in his damn truck and head out already. We'd been friends for more than half my life, and sometimes it felt like he knew me better than I knew myself.

But I knew him, too, and not only did he enjoy goading me, he wasn't going to budge until he said whatever he'd really come to say.

And it definitely wasn't just "hm".

His devilish grin proved me right. "I'm just wondering, hermano, when you're going to admit that the dog isn't going anywhere and give her a proper name and a permanent home."

I huffed out a laugh. "Again, you'd have to take that up with Owen."

"Oh? You have no say over these things now? In your own home?"

"If we keep the dog—" We were definitely keeping the dog. "—it's his dog. So yes, he gets to decide."

"Hm."

"Christ, just spit it out already, brother."

"What? I just find it interesting that you said if ‘we' keep the dog."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is that all?"

"Well, now that you mention it, I was also wondering when you're going to admit that the boy isn't going anywhere, and give him a proper name and a permanent home."

Oh, was that what he was getting at?

Juan probably thought it would get me flustered after all the years I'd told him I wasn't ready for a boy of my own yet, and all the times I'd shied away from anything resembling a real relationship.

The joke was on him, though, because neither of those things made me want to run the other away.

Not anymore.

Not when the boy in question was Owen.

"I'm working on that," I said, very much enjoying seeing my best friend speechless for once. I gave his truck a pointed look. "And if you'd like to let me get back to trying to make that happen…"

"I'm going, I'm going!" he said, grinning so brightly that I regretted not putting on sunscreen this morning. "And tell my future hermanito that the new water heater won't arrive for a few more weeks!"

He hopped in his truck, but before he could swing the door closed, I caught it.

"What? What the hell is the hold-up with the water heater?"

Even knowing the insurance company was supposed to reimburse him, I'd ordered it at cost through one of our suppliers… and put it on the company account, with Juan's blessing.

Anything to make his life a little easier.

Juan grinned. "There is no hold-up. I said tell him. I didn't say it was the truth." He winked. "Just consider it my way of helping you ‘work on that'."

I laughed, shaking my head as he drove away. Of course I wouldn't lie to Owen about something like that, but I took Juan's teasing for what it was—his way of giving me his whole-hearted approval of the boy who'd so thoroughly stolen my heart.

The boy who, once I gave Stumpy a few ear scritches and the two of us finally made it back inside, was slumped over the kitchen table with his head in his hands, looking utterly dejected.

"Baby?" I asked, my heart in my throat as I rushed over to him. "What's wrong?"

He looked up at me, his face pale and his chin trembling. "Um, I think I really fucked up, Daddy."

I pressed my lips together to keep from automatically denying it. I highly doubted he had, but I also had no clue what was going on, and we all fucked up sometimes.

If it was true, then I didn't want to give him empty reassurances. I just wanted to help him make it right. But if I was going to do that, first I needed the facts.

Correction; first, I needed him in my arms.

I lifted him out of the chair, easy to do since he was rather, ah, petite. And while I was entirely sure I would have been just as gone for him regardless of his physical appearance, I had to admit that I kind of adored how pocket-sized he was.

I settled him on my lap and cuddled him close. "Tell me, sweetheart."

He sniffled, but burrowed against me. "The insurance company is denying the claim, and it's all my fault."

"What?" I tipped his chin up. "Baby, that doesn't make sense. That water heater was so far past its prime that it should have been replaced years ago."

He nodded, his voice shaky as he agreed. "Yeah, um, that's kind of what they said, too? They called it, uh, ‘contributory negligence'. They said if I'd done the proper maintenance and hadn't ignored the, um, the warning signs that it was going to break, then… then it could have been replaced before all that flooding happened, and now they're not going to pay out any of it." He swallowed hard, his face losing even more color. "I had to tell my parents that, and they're, um, they're really pissed."

Theywere really pissed?

I clamped my lips together, breathing out through my nose as my blood surged with the same unprecedented anger I'd felt when Owen had been upset the night I'd left the club to get him. My boy was one of the most responsible people I knew, but far too willing to accept blame that didn't belong to him. And somehow, as his Daddy, I needed to find a way to point that out without saying something I'd regret, something I might mean but could never take back, about his parents.

Because Owen was it for me. I was in it with him for the long haul, if he'd have me. I wanted exactly what Juan had been teasing me about, to eventually give him my name and make my home into our home, from now until death did us part.

And part of that meant that whatever I thought about his parents, I couldn't afford to alienate them, or to be the one to drive a wedge between them and Owen.

"Daddy?" he asked, his voice quivering. "Um…"

I put my finger over his lips, taking one more breath to calm myself down. I knew the next thing out of his mouth would have been an apology. Not because he had anything at all to be sorry for, and definitely not to me, but just because that seemed to be his default setting whenever anything went sideways.

We'd work on that, because my boy deserved better.

But first things first.

"Sweetheart, you did nothing wrong here."

He tugged on my wrist, moving my finger away from his mouth. "But?—"

"No," I interrupted, leaning in to plant a firm, listen-to-Daddy kiss on his lips. "You didn't. I have months' worth of texts showing that you were not ignoring the warning signs. You were doing your best on a non-existent budget to mitigate them. Isn't that right? The rusty water. The fluctuating temperature. The leaks."

His eyes widened, his shoulders lowering a bit. "Yes? I mean, yeah, I did my best with all that stuff. Do you really think the insurance company will change their mind if we give them all our texts?"

I almost hated to kill the hope in his eyes, but I would always be honest with him. And right now, I gave zero shits about the insurance payout. What I cared about was my boy's feelings, and helping him see the truth.

"No, baby," I said gently. "Those warning signs were ignored, but my point is, not by you. How many times did you tell your parents about them and ask them to invest more money in maintaining their investment property?"

He blinked at me. "Um, you mean, put money in the house account? Yeah, uh, they told me before I moved out here that they'd never do that, though. Property is way more expensive out here, but they still figured it would be a good investment in the long run if we could keep all the rooms rented out? But, um, they said I'd have to make sure to cover all the expenses from that. They couldn't keep just, like, dumping more money into it."

I scrubbed a hand back through my hair, silently reminding myself not to burn bridges here.

"Tell me something, sweetheart," I finally said. "Did the math work?"

"What?"

"They expected you to manage the property, and from what you've shared with me, I know you keep a pretty involved budget to help you do that. Did the rent cover everything?"

He looked down. "No. I wasn't very good at that part."

I tipped his face back up. "Owen, it's math. It's numbers. You are fucking excellent at it. You know what needs to be done and when, you pay your bills on time, and you stay on top of seasonal maintenance tasks."

"Except the water heater."

"Except the ones that simply exceeded your budget, baby. But it's not your house. It's your parents'. And if they weren't willing to invest the money it actually took to maintain it, then taking the hit on their investment is on them, not you."

His eyes widened as he stared at me, unblinking.

"From what I've seen, you did everything right. But you were only able to work with what you had, and you stretched that as far as you could and then some. If there was negligence, then the insurance company is probably in the right, but it was their negligence, not yours. This is not your fault."

"It's not?"

He clamped down on his lower lip with his teeth.

"No. It's not," I said, tsking at him gently as I tugged it free, then leaned in to soothe it with a gentle kiss.

"But…"

This time, I didn't interrupt him. I just held him, rubbing big, lazy circles against his back, and let him think it through for himself.

After a few minutes, he sucked in a shaky breath, then squared his shoulders. "I, um, I think you're right, Daddy."

I grinned, opening my mouth to tell him how proud I was of him, but before I could, he went on.

"But I don't think that's going to change how mad about all this my parents are. They just want me to be responsible? That was kind of the point of them buying the house and letting me live there. So, um, I don't think they're going to let me off the hook. They'll still expect me to figure out how to make it right, and I don't… um, I don't really know how I'm going to do that."

"You are responsible," I said firmly, holding his gaze, "and making it right is not your job here. It's theirs. You don't make someone responsible by throwing them in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket and expecting them to swim, you do it by guiding and coaching them along the way."

He laughed, a sound that was more stress relief than humor. "Um, not if you're my parents. That's totally what they did. You know, the pool thing? That's how they taught me to swim." He gave me a shaky smile. "And, I mean, it was definitely a little bit scary, but also, like, fine? I didn't drown."

"Oh, baby. You deserve better than not drowning. So much better."

His shaky smile turned shy and kind of beautiful. "But I have it now, don't I? I, um, I have you."

"Damn right you do," I practically growled. "And I have you."

I cupped the back of his head and took his mouth, moving him around until he was straddling me and then kissing him senseless.

I wanted him panting and clinging to me.

I wanted to do my damndest to give him something better, right then and there.

"Can I… can I ask you something, Daddy?" he said breathlessly, flushed and gorgeous, when I finally let him come up for air. "It's not about, you know, the insurance stuff, though."

"Always, baby," I said with a chuckle. "Anything."

Mycock was hard and aching. If he was still thinking about insurance, then I still had work to do.

He blushed, but didn't look away even though I could tell he was feeling a little anxious about whatever he wanted to ask.

"It's about what you said? That you… have me."

"Yes?" I prompted when he didn't go on, stroking his hair.

"Um, but you haven't?" he whispered.

"I haven't done what, sweetheart?"

He bit his lip, nibbling it nervously, but when I gave it a pointed look he immediately stopped, licking over the abused flesh as his blush turned a deeper shade of red.

"Good boy."

The praise had him smiling and blushing even harder as he squirmed on my lap, which felt incredible on top of my cock.

Then he did it again, squirming much more deliberately, and breathlessly said, "You haven't, um, had me. You know, like… sex?"

All the blood rushed down to my cock. Owen and I had had plenty of sex. My boy had the healthy libido of a horny twenty-one-year-old, and had meant what he'd told me the first night we were together when he said he was eager to do "everything."

I'd had more sex this week than I'd had in the entire last year, both of us getting off multiple times every day, using hands and mouths and every body part in between.

But there hadn't been any penetration. Not yet. He hadn't asked, and I hadn't wanted to push it.

But I was pretty sure he was asking now.

"I Googled it," he went on earnestly, nervously plucking at my shirt. "And I get that not, um, not every guy likes that. You know, um, anal? But do you? Because I, um, I wouldn't mind trying it, but we don't have to if you're not—oh."

His eyes went wide as my cock jerked with excitement, a low, needful groan ripping out of me.

"You do like it," he breathed out, a gorgeously hopeful grin spreading across his face.

"Yeah, baby, I do." My hands dropped to his hips, and I moved him, thrusting up to rub myself along his crack as I rocked him back and forth over my shaft. "But you're right, not everyone does."

"I… I think I would," he panted, his pupils blown wide. "If you would? Can we? Daddy? Will you… will you fuck me?"

Yes.

Christ.

Anything he needed, every time he asked me, would always be yes for him. But this? Asking me if I wanted to fuck him?

That wasn't just yes. It was a gift, a blessing, and a higher calling I was more than happy to answer.

It was a hell yes.

It was also the best way I knew to show my boy how I felt about him.

Because the last thing I wanted to do was scare him off by saying the actual words too soon.